John's Relationship with Mark

How does John's Gospel relate to Mark's Gospel? I'd always followed the line from Gardner-Smith and Dodd that John was independent of Mark (for the most part at least). Of late I'm persuade that John probably knew of Mark in some form or had read it previously (so also Carson 1991 Bauckham 1998), but John also has a bag of independent synoptic like traditions which he utilized. One recent monograph that brings some fresh analysis to the discussion is a book by Ian D. Mackay entitled John's Relationship with Mark in the WUNT series.

Mackay pays special attention to the feeding and sea crossing narratives of John 6 and Mark 6-8 and argues that there is a dependency on Mark by John, although it is not literary dependency. I would call Mackay's model aural dependency whereby the Evangelist has probably heard Mark read aloud (or read it himself) and the Fourth Evangelist evokes themes and ideas from Mark, especially the Marcan sequence.

All in all, it's a good read and his discussion on the history of the debate is an excellent and lucid starting point for anyone interested in topic.

I'm reviewing the book in the ANZSTS journal Colloquium.

Bibliographical details are: Mackay, Ian D. 2004. John's Relationship with Mark: An Analysis of John 6 in the Light of Mark 6-8. WUNT 2.182; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.